| 25th International Obfuscated C Code Contest Official Guidelines | Copyright (C) 2006-2017 Leonid A. Broukhis, Simon Cooper, Landon Curt Noll. All Rights Reserved. Permission for personal, education or non-profit use is granted provided this this copyright and notice are included in its entirety and remains unaltered. All other uses must receive prior permission in writing from the contest judges. | This guidelines file is version 2017-12-25-v25. | Most of the changes from the previous IOCCC guideline set | have been marked with a "|" on the left hand side of the line. ABOUT THIS FILE: This file contains guidelines intended to help people who wish to submit entries to the International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC). This is not the IOCCC rules, though it does contain comments about them. The guidelines should be viewed as hints and suggestions. Entries that violate the guidelines but remain within the rules are allowed. Even so, you are safer if you remain within the guidelines. You should read the current IOCCC rules, prior to submitting entries. The rules are typically sent out with these guidelines. We recommend that you follow the twitter handle: @IOCCC to learn about IOCCC news, important IOCCC related alerts, IOCCC reminders, and changes to the rules and these guidelines. You do not have to be a twitter user to follow @IOCCC. Non-twitter users should access: https://twitter.com/ioccc Non-twitter users should force their browsers to reload the above URL to be sure they are seeing the most recent tweets. While we try to post use news at: http://www.ioccc.org/index.html#news such postings may be delayed or obscured by slow to respond mirrors. | WHAT'S NEW IN 2017/2018: This IOCCC runs from: | 2017-Dec-29 05:38:51 UTC to: | 2018-Mar-15 03:08:07 UTC | The reason for the UTC time of day in the IOCCC contest timespan is new. Until the start of this IOCCC, these rules, guidelines and iocccsize.c tool should be considered provisional BETA versions and may be adjusted at any time. | Even though the contest will start in 2017, because the contest will close | in 2018, URLs, subject lines, and contest related email addresses use 2018. The IOCCC submission URL: https://submit.ioccc.org/ will be available and active on or slightly before the start of this IOCCC. The official rules, guidelines and iocccsize.c tool will be available on the official IOCCC web site on or slightly before start of this IOCCC. Please check the IOCCC web site "How to enter" link: http://www.ioccc.org/index.html#enter on or after the start of this IOCCC to be sure you are using the correct versions of these items before using the IOCCC entry submission URL. HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS: You are encouraged to examine the winners of previous contests. See FOR MORE INFORMATION for details on how to get previous winners. Keep in mind that rules change from year to year, so some winning entries may not be valid entries this year. What was unique and novel one year might be 'old' the next year. An entry is usually examined in a number of ways. We typically apply a number of tests to an entry: * look at the original source * convert ANSI tri-graphs to ASCII * C pre-process the source ignoring '#include' lines * C pre-process the source ignoring '#define' and '#include' lines * run it through a C beautifier * examine the algorithm * compile it (with flags to enable all warnings) * execute it You should consider how your entry looks in each of the above tests. You should ask yourself if your entry remains obscure after it has been 'cleaned up' by the C pre-processor and a C beautifier. Your entry need not pass all of the above tests. In certain cases, a test is not important. Entries that compete for the 'strangest/most creative source layout' need not do as well as others in terms of their algorithm. On the other hand, given two such entries, we are more inclined to pick the entry that does something interesting when you run it. We try to avoid limiting creativity in our rules. As such, we leave the contest open for creative rule interpretation. As in real life programming, interpreting a requirements document or a customer request is important. For this reason, we often award 'worst abuse of the rules' to an entry that illustrates this point in an ironic way. We do realize that there are holes in the rules, and invite entries to attempt to exploit them. We will award 'worst abuse of the rules' and then plug the hole next year. Even so, we will attempt to use the smallest plug needed, if not smaller. :-) | There are 2^5-1 reasons why these guidelines seem obfuscated. Check out your program and be sure that it works. We sometimes make the effort to debug an entry that has a slight problem, particularly in or near the final round. On the other hand, we have seen some of the best entries fall down because they didn't work. We tend to look down on a prime number printer that claims that 16 is a prime number. If you do have a bug, you are better off documenting it. Noting "this entry sometimes prints the 4th power of a prime by mistake" would save the above entry. And sometimes, a strange bug/feature can even help the entry! Of course, a correctly working entry is best. Clever people will note that 16 might be prime under certain conditions. Wise people, when submitting something clever will fully explain such cleverness in their entry's remarks file. People who are considering to just use some complex mathematical function or state machine to spell out something such as "hello, world!" really really, and we do mean really, do need to be more creative. Ultra-obfuscated programs are, in some cases, easier to deobfuscate than subtly-obfuscated programs. Consider using misleading or subtle tricks layered on top of or under an appropriate level of obfuscation. A clean looking program with misleading comments and variable names might be a good start. When programs use VTxxx/ANSI sequences, they should NOT limited to a specific terminal brand. Those programs that work in a standard xterm are considered more portable. Rule 2 (the size rule) has been changed. In particular rule 2 refers to the use of an IOCCC size tool. The source for this tool is found at: | http://www.ioccc.org/2018/iocccsize.c | To further clarify rule 2, we subdivided it into two parts, 2a and 2b. | Your entry must satisfy both the maximum size rule 2a AND your entry | must satisfy the IOCCC size tool rule 2b. The IOCCC size tool should be compiled as: | cc -pedantic -Wall -Wextra -std=c11 iocccsize.c -o iocccsize | This tool imposes a 2nd limit on C code size (rule 2b). To check your | code against the 2nd limit of rule 2, use the -i command line option. For example: ./iocccsize -i < prog.c The IOCCC size tool, when using the -i option, may be summarized as: The size tool counts most C reserved words (keyword, secondary, and selected preprocessor keywords) as 1. The size tool counts all other octets as 1 excluding ASCII whitespace, and excluding any ';', '{' or '}' followed by ASCII whitespace, and excluding any ';', '{' or '}' octet immediately before the end of file. ASCII whitespace includes ASCII tab, ASCII space, ASCII newline, ASCII formfeed, and ASCII carriage return. In cases where the above summary and the algorithm implemented by the IOCCC size tool source code conflict, the algorithm implemented by the IOCCC size tool source code is preferred by the judges. There are at least 2 other reasons for selecting 2053 as the 2nd limit besides the fact that 2053 is the next prime > 2048. These reasons may be searched for and discovered if you are "Curios!" about 2053. :-) Moreover, 2053 was the number of the kernel disk pack of one of the judge's BESM-6. Take note that this secondary limit imposed by the IOCCC size tool obviates some of the need to #define C reserved words in an effort to get around the size limits of rule 2. Yes Virginia, that is a hint! OUR LIKES AND DISLIKES: Doing masses of #defines to obscure the source has become 'old'. We tend to 'see thru' masses of #defines due to our pre-processor tests that we apply. Simply abusing #defines or -Dfoo=bar won't go as far as a program that is more well rounded in confusion. Many C compilers dislike the following code, and so do we: #define d define #d foo /* <-- don't expect this to turn into #define foo */ When declaring local or global variables, you should declare the type: int this_is_fine; this_is_not; /* <-- Try to avoid implicit type declarations */ We suggest that you compile your entry with a commonly available c11 (formerly C1X) C compiler (ISO/IEC 9899:2011). Do not assume that optional c11 features are supported. If you must use an optional c11 feature, use feature test macros so that implementations without such optional c11 features will see an entry that is both functional and interesting. We like entries that have workarounds that allow someone with an older c99 (ISO/IEC 9899:1999) compiler to be able to compile and enjoy your entry. | We really like "lint free" code. However lint is a toll of the past. | So try to ensure that your entry compiles warning free. If possible, | to compile compile your code using: | | -Wall -Wextra -pedantic | | For compilers, such as clang, that have the -Weverything option, try | to make your code compile warning free using: | | -Wall -Wextra -Weverything -pedantic | | If you must turn off various warnings on the compile line such as: | | ... -Wno-empty-body -Wno-return-type ... | | be sure to clearly state so in your remarks AS WELL AS in | your "how to build" / Makefile. | | All other things being equal, a program that must turn off fewer | warnings will be considered better, for certain values of better. | Unless you clearly state otherwise in your remarks AS WELL AS in | your "how to build" / Makefile we will compile using: | | -O3 -std=c11 Anyone care to submit an entry that makes gratuitous use of all of the c11 reserved words in their intended C language contexts? NOTE: As with the use of the word Belgium, the use of certain gratuitous c11 reserved words may be completely banned in all parts of the Galaxy, except in one small part (ISO/IEC 9899:2011) where they might not truly understand the implications of such words. http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Belgium http://www.bezem.de/pdf/ReservedWordsInC.pdf DO NOT assume that we will use gcc to compile your program. We will first try to compile your program using Clang. It is much better to not use any obscure compiler flags if you can help it. We want to discourage the use of obscure compiler flags that would make the program less portable. One side effect of the above is that you cannot assume the use of nested functions such as: main() { | void do_not_do_this() { | printf("The machine that goes bing!\n"); | } | do_not_do_this(); } This is because such nested functions often requires one to compile with a flag such as -fnested-functions that is not found on some compilers. On 2012 July 20, the judges rescinded the encouragement of nested functions. Such constructions, while interesting and sometimes amusing, will have to wait until they required by a C standard that are actually implemented in commonly used C compilers. Sorry! | We prefer programs that do not require a fish license for pet fish, crayon use not withstanding. If your entry uses functions that have a variable number of arguments, be careful. Systems implement va_list as a wide variety of ways. Because of this, a number of operations using va_list are not portable and must not be used: * assigning a non-va_list variable to/from a va_list variable * casting a non-va_list variable into/from a va_list variable * passing a va_list variable to a function expecting a non-va_list arg * passing a non-va_list variable to a function expecting a va_list arg * performing arithmetic on va_list variables * using va_list as a structure or union In particular, do not treat va_list variables as if they were a char **'s. Avoid using . Use instead. On 28 January 2007, the Judges rescinded the requirement that the '#" in a C preprocessor directive must be the 1st non-whitespace octet. The exit() function returns void. Some broken systems have exit() return int, your entry should assume that exit() returns a void. | This guideline has a change mark at the very beginning. Small programs are best when they are short, obscure and concise. While such programs are not as complex as other winners, they do serve a useful purpose. They are often the only program that people attempt to completely understand. For this reason, we look for programs that are compact, and are instructional. | While those who are used to temperatures found on dwarf planet | Pluto might be able to explain to the Walrus why our seas are boiling hot, the question of whether pigs have wings is likely to remain a debatable point to most of them. One line programs should be short one line programs: say around 80 to 120 octets long. Going well beyond 140 octets is a bit too long to be called a one-liner in our vague opinion. We tend to dislike programs that: * are very hardware specific * are very OS version specific (index/strchr differences are OK, but socket/streams specific code is likely not to be) * dump core or have compiler warnings (it is OK only if you warn us in the 'remark' header item) * won't compile or run under a POSIX P1003.1/P1003.2 like systems * depend on a utility or application not normally found on most most POSIX P1003.1/P1003.2 like systems * abuse the build file to get around the size limit * obfuscate by excessive use of ANSI tri-graphs * are longer than they need to be * are "blob-ier" than they need to be * are rather similar to previous winners :-( * are too similar to previous losers :-) Unless you are cramped for space, or unless you are entering the 'best one liner' category, we suggest that you format your program in a more creative way than simply forming excessively long lines. At least one judge prefers to maintain the use of the leap-second as part of the world's time standard. If your code prints time with seconds, we prefer that your code be capable of printing the time of day during a leap-second where the value in seconds after the minute mark is 60. The "how to build" make process should not be used to try and get around the size limit. It is one thing to make use of a several -D's on the compile like to help out, but it is quite another to use many bytes of -D's in order to try and squeeze the source under the size limit. The judges, as a group, have a history giving wide degree of latitude to reasonable entries. And recently they have had as much longitudinal variation as it is possible to have on Earth. :-) You should try to restrict commands used on the build file to POSIX-like or common Un*x-like commands. You can also compile and use your own programs. If you do, try to build and execute from the current directory. This restriction is not a hard and absolute one. The intent is to ensure that the building if your program is reasonably portable. | We prefer programs that are portable across a wide variety of Un*x-like | operating systems (i.e., Linux, BSD, Un*x, etc.). You are in a maze of twisty guidelines, all different. There are at least zero judges who think that Fideism has little or nothing to do with the IOCCC judging process. Don't forget that the building of your program should be done ***without human intervention***. So don't do things such as: prog: prog.c #echo this next line requires data from standard input cat > prog.c ${CC} prog.c -o prog However, you can do something cute such as making your program do something dumb (or cute) when it is built 'automatically'. And when it is run with a human involved, do something more clever. For example, one could use the build instructions: prog: prog.c ${CC} prog.c -DNON_HUMAN_COMPILE -o prog @echo "See remarks section about alternate ways to compile" and then include special notes in the program "remarks" for alternate / human intervention based building. We want to get away from source that is simply a compact blob of octets. Really try to be more creative than blob coding. *HINT!* Please do not use things like gzip to get around the size limit. | Try to be much more creative. We really dislike entries that make blatant use of including large data files to get around the source code size limit. We do not recommend submitting systemd source code to the IOCCC, if nothing else because that code is likely to exceed the source code size limit. This isn't to say that another highly compact and obfuscated replacement of init would not be an interesting submission. Did we remember to indicate that programs that blatantly use some complex state machine to do something simple are boring? We think we did. :-) All generalizations are false, including this one. -- Mark Twain Given two versions of the same program, one that is a compact blob of code, and the other that is formatted more like a typical C program, we tend to favor the second version. Of course, a third version of the same program that is formatted in an interesting and/or obfuscated way, would definitely win over the first two! Remember, you can submit more than one entry. See the rules for details. We suggest that you avoid trying for the 'smallest self-replicating' source. The smallest, a zero byte entry, won in 1994. Programs that claim to be the smallest C source that does something, really better be the smallest such program or they risk being rejected because they do not work as documented. Please note that the C source below, besides lacking in obfuscation, is NOT the smallest C source file that when compiled and run, dumps core: main; We do not like writable strings. That is, we don't want stuff like: char *T = "So many primes, so little time!"; ... T[14] = ';'; Please don't make use of this feature, even if your system allows it. However, initialized char arrays are OK to write over. This is OK: char b[] = "Is this OK"; b[9] = 'K'; | There are more than zero typos in this sentence. X client entries should be as portable as possible. Entries that adapt to a wide collection of environments will be favored. For example, don't depend on a particular type or size of display. Don't assume the use of a particular browser. Instead assume a generic browser that forms to a widely used W3C standard. Don't assume a particular sound sub-system or video driver is installed in the OS. Instead, make use of a well known and widely available open source program (one that actually works) to display audio/visual data. X client entries should avoid using X related libraries and software that is not in wide spread use. This is the only guideline that contains the word fizzbin. We don't like entries that use proprietary toolkits such as the M*tif, Xv*ew, or OpenL*ok toolkits, since not everyone has them. Use of an open source toolkit that is widely and freely available instead. The previous guideline in this spot has been replaced by this guideline. X client entries should not to depend on particular items on .Xdefaults. If you must do so, be sure to note the required lines in the program "remarks". They should also not depend on any particular window manager. Try to avoid entries that play silent sound segments or play the Happy Birthday song; music that some people believe is copyrighted (even if such copyrights appear to be bogus and/or blatant abuses of the copyright system). While we recognize that UN*X is not a universal operating system, the contest does have a bias towards such systems. In an effort to expand the scope of the contest, we phrase our bias in terms of POSIX P1003.1 and P1003.2 standards. This will allow certain non-UN*X OS users to submit entries. On the other hand, this is a guideline and not a rule. We will not reject an entry based on some POSIX technicality. When dealing with OS and application environments, we suggest that you be reasonable with a nod towards vanilla UN*X-like systems. POSIX will evolve but not as much as the contest. You very well might not be completely prohibited from failing to not partly misunderstand this particular guideline, but of course we could | not possibly comment. Nevertheless, you are neither required nor mandated | to determine that this or the previous sentence is false and misleading. | Therefore, it might be wise to not fail to consider failing to do so. We like programs that: * are as concise and small as they need to be * do something at least quasi-interesting * are portable * are unique or novel in their obfuscation style * MAKE USE OF A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF OBFUSCATION <== HINT!! * make us laugh and/or throw up :-) (humor really helps!) * make us want to eat good chocolate. Some types of programs can't excel (anti-tm) in some areas. Your program doesn't have to excel in all areas, but doing well in several areas really does help. You are better off explaining what your entry does in the program "remarks" section rather than leaving it obscure for the judges as we might miss something and/or be too tired to notice. | Please avoid this specific individual guideline, when possible. We freely admit that interesting, creative or humorous comments in the program "remarks" help your chances of winning. If you had to read so many twisted entries, you too would enjoy a good laugh or two. We think the readers of the contest winners do as well. We do read the program "remarks" during the judging process, so it is worth your while to write remarkable program "remarks". We dislike C code with trailing control-M's (\r or \015) that results in compilation failures. Some non-Un*x/non-Linux tools such as MS Visual C and MS Visual C++ leave trailing control-M's on lines. Users of such tools should strip off such control-M's before submitting their entries. In some cases tools have a "Save As" option that will prevent such trailing control-M's being added. One should restrict libcurses to portable features found on BSD or Linux curses. Rule 13 states any C source that fails to compile because of unescaped octets with the high bit set (octet value >= 128) will be rejected. Instead of unescaped octets, you should use \octal or \hex escapes: /* 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456 */ char *foo = "This string is 36 octets in length \263"; /* This octet requires 4 octets of source ^^^^ */ if (strlen(foo) == 36) printf("foo is 36 octets plus a final NUL\n"); else printf("This code should not print this message\n"); It is a very good idea to, in your remarks file, tell us why you think your entry is obfuscated. This is particularly true if your entry is has some very subtle obfuscations that we might otherwise overlook. <<-- Hint! Anyone can format their code into a dense blob. A really clever author will try format their entry using a "normal" formatting style such that at first glance (if you squint and don't look at the details) the code might pass for non-obfuscated C. Deceptive comments, and mis-leading formatting, in some cases, may be a plus. On the other hand, a misleading code style requires more source bytes. If you do elect to use misleading formatting and comments, we suggest you remark on this point in your remarks where you talk about why you think your entry is obfuscated. On the other hand, if you are pushing up against the size limits, you may be forced into creating a dense blob. Such are the trade offs that obfuscators face! We prefer code that can run on either a 64-bit or 32-bit processor. However, it is unwise to assume it will run on an i386 or x86 architecture. We believe that Mark Twain's remark: Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. is a good guideline for those writing code for the IOCCC. | The IOCCC size tool source, iocccsize.c, is not an original work. | Submitting an entry based on our iocccsize.c violates rule 8, | even if you write that code! | Rule 8 does not prohibit you from writing your own obfuscated IOCCC size tool. | However if you do, you might wish to make your tool do something more | interesting than simply implementing the IOCCC size tool algorithm. While programs that only run in a specific word size are OK. If you have to pick, choose a 64-bit word size. If we are feeling ornery we might choose to compile your program for running on an Arduino or a PDP-11. Heck, should we ever find an emulator of 60-bit CDC Cyber CPU running a POSIX-like OS, we might just try your entry on that emulator as well :-) If your entry MUST run only in 32-bit mode on an Intel processor, add the following compiler flag: -arch i386 to your "how to build" make compile line. For example: prog: prog.c ${CC} prog.c -arch i386 -o prog Be even more creative! | If there are limitations in your entry, you are highly encouraged | to note such limitations in your remarks file. For example if your | entry factors values up to a certain size, you might want to state: | | This entry factors values up 2305567963945518424753102147331756070. | Attempting to factor larger values will produce unpredictable results. | | The judges might try to factor the value -5, so you want to might state: | | This entry factors positive values up 2305567963945518424753102147331756070. | Attempting to factor large values will produce unpredictable results. | | However the judges might try to also factor 0, so you want to might state: | | This entry factors values between 1 and 2305567963945518424753102147331756070. | Attempting to factor values outside that range will produce unpredictable results. | | Moreover the try to also factor 3.5 or 0x7, or Fred, so you want to might state: | | This entry factors integers between 1 and 2305567963945518424753102147331756070. | Attempting to factor anything else will produce unpredictable results. | | You entry might be better off catching the attempt to factor bogus values | and doing something interesting. So you might want to code accordingly and state: | | This entry factors integers between 1 and 2305567963945518424753102147331756070. | Attempting to factor anything else will cause the program to insult your | pet fish Eric. | | The judges might not have a pet fish named Eric, so might want to state: | | This entry factors integers between 1 and 2305567963945518424753102147331756070. | Attempting to factor anything else will cause the program to insult your | pet fish Eric, or in the case that you lack such a pet, will insult the | pet that you do not have. | | When all other things are equal, an entry with fewer limitation will be judged | better than an entry with lots of limitations. So you might want to code accordingly | and state: | | This entry attempts to a factor value of any size provided that the program | is given enough time and memory. If the value is not a proper integer, the | program will insult a fish named Eric, even if such a fish does not exist. | | BTW: What is so special about 2305567963945518424753102147331756070? You tell us! ABUSING THE RULES: Legal abuse of the rules is somewhat encouraged. Legal rule abuse may involve, but is not limited to, doing things that are technically allowed by the rules and yet do not fit the spirit of what we intended to be submitted. Legal rule abuse is encouraged to help promote creativity. Rule abuse entries, regardless of if they receive an award, result in changes to the next year's rules and guidelines. Legal abuse of the rules is NOT an invitation to violate the rules. An entry that violates the rules in the opinion of the judges, WILL be disqualified. RULE ABUSE CARRIES A CERTAIN LEVEL OF RISK! If you have an entry that might otherwise be interesting, you might want to submit two versions; one that does not abuse the rules and one that does. If you intend to abuse the rules, indicate so in the program "remarks". You must try to justify why you consider your rule abuse to be allowed under the rules. That is, you must plead your case as to why your entry is valid. Humor and/or creativity help plead a case. Abusing the web submission procedure tends to annoy us more than amuse us. Spend your creative energy on content of your entry rather than on the submission process itself. We are often asked why the contest rules and guidelines seem too strange or contain mistakes, flaws or grammatical errors. One reason is that we sometimes make genuine mistakes. But in many cases such problems, flaws or areas of confusion are deliberate. Changes to rules and guidelines in response to rule abuses, are done in a minimal fashion. Often we will deliberately leave behind holes (or introduce new ones) so that future rule abuse may continue. A cleaver author should be able to read them and "drive a truck through the holes" in the rules and guidelines. At the risk of stating the obvious, this contest is a parody of the software development process. The rules and guidelines are only a small part of the overall contest. Even so, one may think the contest rules and guideline process as a parody of the sometimes tragic mismatch between what a customer (or marketing) wants and what engineering delivers. Real programmers must face obfuscated and sometimes conflicting specifications and requirements from marketing, sales, product management an even from customers themselves on a | all too regular basis. This is one of the reasons why the rules and guidelines are written in obfuscated form. JUDGING PROCESS: Entries are judged by Leonid A. Broukhis, Simon Cooper, Landon Curt Noll. Each entry submitted is given a random id number and subdirectory. The entry files including, but not limited to prog.c, Makefile (that we form from around your "how to build" information), as well as any data files that you submit are all placed under their own directory. stored and judged from this directory. Any information about the authors is not read by the judges until the judging process is complete, and then only from entries that have won an award. Because we do not read this information for entries that do not win, we do not know who did not win. The above process helps keep us biased for/against any one particular individual. Therefore you MUST refrain from putting any information that reveals your identity in your entry. Now some people point out that coding style might reveal the information about the others. However we consider this to be simply circumstantial and outside the scope of the above paragraph. Some people, in the past, have attempted to obfuscate their identity by including comments of famous Internet personalities such as Peter Honeyman (http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/honey/). The judges are on to this trick and therefore consider any obfuscated source or data file claiming to be from Honeyman to not be form Honeyman. This of course creates an interesting paradox known as the "obfuscated Peter Honeyman paradox". Should Peter Honeyman actually submit an obfuscated entry, he alone is excluded from the above, as we will likely believe it just another attempt at confusion. This guideline is known as the "Peter Honeyman is exempt" guideline. BTW: None of the entries claiming to be from Peter Honeyman have ever won an award. So it is theoretically possible that Peter Honeyman did submit an entry in the past. In the past, Peter had denied submitting anything to the IOCCC. Perhaps those entries were submitted by one of his students? | Hopefully we are CLEAR on this point! The rules now strongly state: | PLEASE DO NOT put author's names, in obvious way, into your source code, remarks, data files, etc. The above "Peter Honeyman is exempt" not withstanding. We seemed to have digressed again ... :-) Returning to the judging process: We prefer to be kept in the dark as much as you are until the final awards are given. We enjoy the surprise of finding out in the end, who won and where they were from. We attempt to keep all entries anonymous, unless they win an award. Because the main 'prize' of winning is being announced, we make all attempts to send non-winners into oblivion. We remove all non-winning files, and shred all related paper. By tradition, we do not even reveal the number of entries that we received. During the judging process. a process that spans multiple sessions over a few weeks, post general updates from our @IOCCC twitter account. Once we have selected the winners, for each category we will tweet: category name name(s) of the authors (or anonymous if requested) twitter handle(s) (if provided and if anonymity was not requested) country code(s) of the author(s) | After the initial announcement, we attempt to send Email to the authors of the winning entries. One reason we do this is to give the authors a chance to comment on the way we have presented their entry. They are given the chance to correct mistakes and typos. We often accept their suggestions/comments about our remarks as well. This is done prior to posting the winners to the wide world. Judging consists of a number of elimination rounds. During a round, the collection of entries are divided into two roughly equal piles; the pile that advances on to the next round, and the pile that does not. We also re-examine the entries that were eliminated in the previous round. Thus, an entry gets at least two readings. A reading consists of a number of actions: * reading the "how to build" information and forming a Makefile * reading prog.c, the C source * reviewing the "remarks" information * briefly looking any any supplied data files * passing the source thru the C pre-processor skipping over any #include files * performing a number of C beautify/cleanup edits on the source * passing the beautified source thru the C pre-processor skipping over any #include files * compiling/building the source * running the program * Doing other things that only IOCCC judges know about :-) In later rounds, other actions are performed including performing miscellaneous tests on the source and binary. Until we reduce the stack of entries down to about 25 entries, entries are judged on an individual basis. An entry is set aside because it does not, in our opinion, meet the standard established by the round. When the number of entries thins to about 25 entries, we begin to form award categories. Entries begin to compete with each other for awards. An entry will often compete in several categories. The actual award category list will vary depending on the types of entries we receive. A typical category list might be: * best small one line program (see above about one line programs) * best small program * strangest/most creative source layout * most useful obfuscated program * best game that is obfuscated * most creatively obfuscated program * most deceptive C code (code with deceptive comments and source code) * best X client (see OUR LIKES AND DISLIKES) * best abuse of ISO C or ANSI C standard (see above about compilers) * best abuse of the C preprocessor * worst abuse of the rules * (anything else so strange that it deserves an award) We do not limit ourselves to this list. For example, a few entries are so good/bad that they are declared winners at the start of the final round. We will invent awards categories for them, if necessary. In the final round process, we perform the difficult tasks of reducing the remaining entries (typically about 25) down to to about half that number: declaring those remaining to be winners. Often we are confident that the entries that make it into the final round are definitely better than the ones that do not make it. The selection of the winners out of the final round, is less clear cut. Sometimes a final round entry is good enough to win, but is beat out by a similar, but slightly better entry. For this reason, it is sometimes worthwhile to re-enter an improved version of an entry that failed to win in a previous year. This assumes, of course, that the entry is worth improving in the first place! More than one IOCCC judge has been known to bribe another IOCCC judge into voting for a winning entry by offering a bit high quality chocolate. This technique is highly discouraged for use by non-IOCCC judges. More often than not, we select a small entry (usually one line), a strange/creative layout entry. We sometimes also select an entry that abuses the contest guidelines in an interesting way, or that stretches the content rules that while legal, is nevertheless goes against the intent of the rules. In the end, we traditionally pick one entry as 'best'. Sometimes such an entry simply far exceeds any of the other entries. More often, the 'best' is picked because it does well in a number of categories. In years past, we renamed the winning entry from prog.c to a name related to the submitter(s) names. This is no longer done. Winning source is called prog.c A compiled binary is called prog. ANNOUNCEMENT OF WINNERS: The judges will tweet initial announcement of who won, the name of their award, and a very brief description of the winning entry from the @IOCCC twitter handle. Non-twitter users should visit: https://twitter.com/ioccc Non-twitter users should force their browsers to reload the above URL to be sure they are seeing the most recent tweets. The judges will then post an initial announcement of who won, the name of their award, and a very brief description of the winning entry on the IOCCC web site: http://www.ioccc.org/whowon.html We will also attempt to submit a brief announcement story to /.: http://slashdot.org that, depending on the willingness of the /. editors, may be posted to their site at the same time. Note that initial announcement will NOT contain source. This is because the winning authors are given a chance to review the judges comments, and test our Makefile. This review process typically takes a few weeks. Sometime after the initial announcement, and once the the review by the winners has been completed, the winning source will be posted to the IOCCC web site: http://www.ioccc.org/years.html NOTE: previous winners are available at that URL We will also tweet, via @IOCCC, when the winning source is available. It is pointless to ask the IOCCC judges how many entries we receive. Other government TLA or FLA snooping organizations are prohibited from either confirming, denying or revealing any knowledge of this data point. Often, winning entries are published in selected magazines from around the world. Winners have appeared in books ("The New Hackers Dictionary") and on T-Shirts. More than one winner has been turned in a tattoo! Last, but not least, winners receive international fame and flames! :-) FOR MORE INFORMATION: | You may contact the judges by sending Email to the following address: | q.2018@ioccc.org (do not submit entries to this address) | You must include the words 'ioccc 2018 question' in the subject of your | Email message when sending Email to the judges. Questions and comments about the contest are welcome. Comments about confusing rules and guidelines are also welcome. The rules and the guidelines may (and often do) change from year to year. You should be sure you have the current rules and guidelines prior to submitting entries. Check out the IOCCC Web page: http://www.ioccc.org It has rules, guidelines and winners of previous contests (1984 to date). For the updates and breaking IOCCC news, you are encouraged to follow the twitter handle: @IOCCC You do not have to be a twitter user to follow @IOCCC. Non-twitter users should access: https://twitter.com/ioccc Non-twitter users should force their browsers to reload the above URL to be sure they are seeing the most recent tweets. Leonid A. Broukhis Simon Cooper chongo (Landon Curt Noll) /\cc/\